


Nights of Perfection

by smudged_ink_writing



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: After Dante was Attacked, Boys In Love, Canon LGBTQ Male Character, Do People Like This???, Fluff, Gay, Gay Character(s), Gay Pride, Getting Together, Hair Braiding, How Do I Tag, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Pride, Prom, Robert Frost Quote, Self-Indulgent, Soft Boys, The House in Tucson, Years Later, You know Aunt Ophelia's house, love these dorks, my lil gay heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smudged_ink_writing/pseuds/smudged_ink_writing
Summary: Dante has skilled painter's hands. Ari has long hair. A perfect combination.
Relationships: Aristotle Mendoza & Dante Quintana, Aristotle Mendoza/Dante Quintana
Comments: 17
Kudos: 72





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I've been toying with this idea for awhile now, so I just decided to go for it! I'm kind of proud it didn't turn out terribly.  
> So the first chapter is third person narration, and it's more focused on Dante's perspective. It sort of serves as an introduction to this little series of cute stuff between our boys. The rest is first person and it'll be some from Dante's POV and some from Ari's POV.  
> Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so we begin...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I've been toying with this idea for awhile now, so I decided to just go for it. Enjoy! <3

Dante had always been good with his hands. He had the hands of a painter, and his fingers were nimble and sure and quick. He could stand in front of a canvas for hours painting something, his hands steady and his mind darting this way and that while simultaneously being still and focused. Dante Quintana had glorious hands. He knew it, Ari knew it, just about everyone who paid any attention to him knew that his hands were masterpieces. 

When Dante painted, he smeared words onto the canvas. He spread words that he had invented in patterns that only his eyes and hands could plan and calculate. Come to think of it, maybe the words he painted were already real and he was just rearranging them to make them into his own. His art was everything about him and more. You could read it like a story without reading it at all, the twists and turns, and the sheer mystery of it all created with one flick of his delicate wrist. 

In short, Dante was amazing at anything that involved his fingers. 

The accident. He could still remember when he had sat crumpled by Ari’s hospital bed, begging him for forgiveness. He could still remember how it had sounded when he was in that room with Ari, talking to him, reading to him, his voice bouncing uncomfortably off of the bare walls. Dante had wanted nothing more than to soak his bare fingers in paint and decorate the white prison cell walls. Just for Ari, he wanted to smear his language onto them, paint everything he had ever been. All for this boy. He wanted to wrap his soul into a piece of canvas and deliver it to him if it only meant Ari would know how he felt, how he thought, how he existed, how he was.

After Ari had gone home, he’d let his hair grow long. Dante had had to leave for eight months in Chicago that made him want nothing more than to paint himself wings and fly all the way home. He didn’t know where home was anymore. He didn’t care where home was anymore. Ari was the only person who made him feel like home was even a tangible concept. Hell, Ari was the only person besides his parents (and they didn’t count) who made Dante feel anything worth feeling at all. When he came back, Ari still hadn’t cut the hair, which was more than slightly amazing to see after months of not laying eyes on him at all. 

That hair. Ari had so much hair. Dante found himself wanting to touch it. Run his fingers through its length. It cascaded all the way to Ari’s toned shoulders (damn, that boy’s arms) in a dark sweep. Occasionally, Ari would run his fingers through it to the ends, and it would part and fall in different ways each time. Dante wanted to memorize every way it did that every single time so he could remember each version of Ari. 

One afternoon, after Ari had washed his hair and Dante had come over to find it wet and slick against Ari’s neck, he found himself overcome with the urge. The need was practically flowing out of him. It wasn’t even a sensual thing, it was just that Dante for some reason needed to touch the hair or he was going to spontaneously combust and never be able to paint again. 

“I want to braid your hair,” he burst out suddenly.  
“Oh?” Ari’s eyebrow quirked upward. Dante’s neck was suddenly warm and tingling.  
“Y-yeah. If I do it now, then it’ll dry and be all wavy.”  
“Why, Dante?”  
“I don’t really know. I just like your hair. It’s a lot like you, you know. Dark and somewhat mysterious unless you know your way around it. And since you’ve grown it long, it gets in your way a lot, and those knots you put it in are okay but I really just want to fix it,” he babbled.  
Ari looked a little suspicious.  
“This isn’t some ploy to touch you or anything,” Dante assured him quickly, “I really just love your hair.”  
“Okay,” Ari said finally.  
Dante let out a relieved sigh and headed to the bathroom for a comb and rubber bands. 

A few minutes later, Dante was perched on the bottom corner of Ari’s bed with Ari on the floor reading aloud between his legs, a respectable distance apart.  
Dante combed gently, careful not to tug, from root to tip, root to tip. Hesitantly, he ran his fingers through experimentally, and Ari let out a glorious little sigh that slipped through his poetic readings. Everything in Dante except for one tiny voice told him to keep doing that, to stroke Ari’s head, to massage his scalp. Thankfully, Dante listened to the tiny voice. He was rather experienced at holding himself back when it came to his beautiful best friend. His hands pulled back and started to section.  
He pulled the hair into two parts and put one part loosely in a band while starting to section the other into three. Ari tilted his head accommodatingly in response, never halting in his reading aloud, so Dante could work more easily. Dante’s nimble fingers set to work, pulling and twisting in that perfect Dante way that was a mixture of loud and quiet, soft and forceful, fierce and gentle. It felt like he was braiding all his feelings, all his thoughts, all his existence, and all his being into those strands, so soft even while wet they felt like silk against Dante’s knuckles, so dark and richly brown they looked like black to everyone but the boy who was so close to them.  
All at once, while he tied off the first side and tenderly tipped Ari’s head to the other, he realized that he was braiding into Ari’s hair what he’d wanted to smear on the walls of that empty hospital room. Everything rushed back. And everything was a lot. Everything he’d felt, all the desperation and anger and helplessness crashed into him. A tear slid down his face and landed on the knuckle of one of his perfect, sure fingers.  
Dante pulled himself together as he pulled the beautiful hair into the end of the french braid, focusing on Ari’s voice. He tied the second braid off, and to seal his work he silently pressed a kiss into his palm and planted it atop Ari’s head, disguising the motion as a smoothing of his work. 

Ari stood after closing the book of poetry and walked to the mirror. A small smile crept onto his face, and Dante’s own lips curled into a huge one.  
“So?” he asked excitedly.  
“So.”  
“So?"  
“So.”  
“God, Ari. What do you think?”  
“I think…” Ari tilted his head. “I think, if I look terrible with curly hair, I’m blaming it on you and you alone.”  
“Good enough for me. Let’s go sit outside so it’ll dry.” 

When Ari’s hair was fully dry, which didn’t take long in the dry heat of an El Paso spring afternoon in direct sunlight, Dante slowly tugged the rubber bands off and undid the twisted strands. His fingers dug into Ari’s scalp again, and Ari poorly tried to hide his small sounds of pleasure at the feeling. Once Dante was satisfied, he brought Ari to the mirror again.  
The two of them stared at him blankly for several minutes. 

After that day, Ari decided that it was going to be unspoken that Dante did his hair whenever they were together. Dante took to bringing a spare comb and some bands in the pockets of his shorts, and Ari took to never acknowledging the fact that he loved it when Dante did it for him.  
By the beginning of summer, even as they got awkward and shared an even more awkward kiss when Ari pulled away and Dante died a little on the inside, Dante was still doing it for him. Everything. He’d put it in two perfectly precise pigtails (which Ari thought was stupid at first since it reminded him of a seven-year-old girl, but started to respect when he realized it kept it out of his face so well), cornrow braids, twists, and even fancier updos that required lessons and borrowed hairpins from Gina and Susie. 

They never once spoke of it after that first day. But every time Ari came home after seeing Dante, his hair was either done up or gently wavy. Even his parents realized right away that it wasn’t appropriate to speak of. No one commented at school, because Ari was rather intimidating, and Gina and Susie were in on it and helping Dante come up with new things to try with his perfect hands. 

Ari silently resolved to never cut his hair shorter than his shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> As always, find me on Tumblr @[smudgedinkwriting](https://smudged-ink-writing.tumblr.com) or email me at smudgedinkwriting@gmail.com.


	2. Night of Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Gina and Susie beg Ari to go to prom, Mrs. Mendoza is enthusiasic, and Ari is much less so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is Ari's perspective. 
> 
> I don't know, man. Enjoy.

“Mendoza, you’re being a buzzkill.”  
“No, Gina. I’m not being a buzzkill. I’m being honest.”  
Gina rolled her eyes at me.  
“Come on, Ari. You have to! Please?” Susie flashed her sad smile and huge eyes that could spill with tears at any moment. She cried an awful lot, and I never saw it coming.

Gina and Susie had been asking me since January if I was going to prom. At my school, they always did prom two weeks after classes ended as a sort of last-hurrah for the seniors. It was just weird. I was a junior. I didn’t need a last-hurrah, and I certainly didn’t need to spend hours standing awkwardly at the edge of a school gym with a cup of terrible punch fighting off Gina and Susie trying to pull me out to dance to an equally terrible song. Nothing about that sounded fun. 

“I really don’t want to,” I said.  
“Why not?” Gina fired back a little too angrily.  
“I just don’t, okay?”  
Gina turned. “What are some good reasons people don’t go to parties, Susie?”  
“Hmm. They have other plans.”  
“Yeah, like Mendoza has anything better to do,” Gina said with a snort.  
“Hey!”  
“Shh, I’m not done. Because they’re out of town or sick.”  
“Nope, and nope.”  
“Um…” Susie trailed off, stumped.  
“How about because they have no interest?” I added.  
Gina ignored me and said, “it seems there’s no reason for Ari to miss prom.”  
Susie smiled and dipped a french fry into her milkshake. I shook my head and went back into the Charcoaler so I could help clean up and finally go home. 

That night, I went straight home, thinking of prom. Gina was as stubborn as it got. Maybe if I promised something in return for not going? She could drive my truck for a few days…  
“Ari?” my mother called from the kitchen.  
“Hi, mom.”  
“Gina Navarro called while you were out,” she said while preparing me a plate, the epitome of a poor attempt at casualness.  
I groaned.  
“What? Come on, Ari, you only get to go to prom twice.”  
“I don’t want to go to prom at all!”  
“Why not? I loved prom! It’s such a good time,” she tried, putting food in front of me.  
“I just don’t,” I mumbled as I dug in with my fork.  
“Really, you should just go.”  
“I don’t even have a date.”  
“Yes, you do. You’re going with Gina Navarro and Susie Byrd, remember?”  
“They told you that?”  
“Yes, Ari. We can rent a tuxedo and I’ll pick out some corsages for them. You can pick them up in your truck, and you can get ready at Dante’s if you want as compensation. You’ve been either at school, at work, or in the basement lifting weights for far too long. You’re going to prom, Aristotle,” my mother admonished with a smack of a towel on the counter for effect. 

~~~

The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.  
School was out and Dante was back. Prom was tonight. I was taking not one, but two girls to the most horrifying party of my high school career. And it was my mother who decided it was all going to happen. 

An hour before I had to be ready, I was sitting on the edge of Dante’s bed reading while he painted something he never showed me. His long fingers curved around the brush and worked in swift curved strokes. Between his very slightly furrowed eyebrows, the beginning of a crease appeared that signified he did that too often for a seventeen-year-old. I was desperately trying to ignore what would be happening soon, and Dante was playing along, although it was clear he wanted to talk about it. Dante would love prom. Catholic was an all-boys high school, so prom was more of a hangout than anything for them since there were no dates and they only bothered to dress up because the teachers would be taking pictures. I didn’t invite him. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. 

He cracked at last. “Ari, are you excited for prom?”  
“No.”  
“Oh. Why not?”  
“I didn’t want to go. Gina and my mom made me.”  
“Oh.”  
“Oh.”

We lapsed back into silence. He wanted to say more. I passed the time by counting the words on the page in front of me until he cracked again. I got to forty-three, a new record. His painful restraint was practically tangible.  
“Ari?” he said carefully, nervously wiping his paint-stained fingers on a dirty towel.  
“Yeah?”  
“Can I do your hair?” 

I didn’t like to talk about Dante doing my hair. Not even to Dante. It was quite possibly the best thing that I’d ever let happen accidentally. My favorite thing. My father had tried to bring it up and I’d changed the subject. My mother had said something directly and I’d scowled and avoided the question. Some idiots at school had stared at the neat french braids that ran down the sides of my head or the soft twist it sat pinned in on the back of my head, but they knew better than to say something stupid. It was like a secret to no one but a secret to everyone. It was just Dante being Dante, manifested on my head. 

So in response, I silently crawled to the floor and resumed my reading there. Dante returned from his bathroom a few minutes later with his usual tools plus a set of hot rollers that must have been Mrs. Quintana’s. I must have made a face because Dante chuckled as he plugged them in. I started to read out loud from the book I’d been holding the whole time, as was tradition in events like these. 

As his rollers heated, Dante brushed out my hair with his fingers. I pressed my lips together as they curled upward into a small smile so I didn’t let out the little sigh that always rose in my throat as he did that. It made me pause my reading every time, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know I loved it, but I refused to allow him the satisfaction of the noise I wanted to make. He combed it through a few times, and his rollers finished heating. I’d never had a hot thing in my hair before, and my mind flew around with wondering. 

“You know what you’re doing with those?” I blurted.  
“Yes, Ari. It’s not going to hurt you.” 

Thoroughly embarrassed from having said something about this whole situation, I went back to the book and read the next poem. Dante’s fingers rolled sections toward my head one by one and the metal pins to hold them clacked gently when he reached for another one. The girls who went to prom wore huge puffy dresses with big sleeves and their hair was done very, very poofy. Dante would never do that to me, thank goodness. 

“Now we wait,” Dante said excitedly, going back to his painting. I continued to read in silence, mostly just staring at the page and trying to ignore the images that popped into my head as me with the hair of George Washington. 

Fifteen minutes later or so, Dante checked to see if everything was cooled, and he proclaimed them ready with a huge smile on his face. I shook my head gently at his enthusiasm while swallowing my own grin. 

The rollers came out quickly and the kit of them was reassembled. Dante ran his fingers through them and seemed satisfied. With only the sound of my voice transferring the ink on the page into the soft air of Dante’s bedroom and pins next to my ear, we coexisted as what I assumed would be a work of art came to life on my head. Only twenty minutes until I had to leave to get Gina and Susie. Somehow, prom didn’t seem so bad. 

Dante clapped his hands a few times and made a strangled squeak of joy that sounded like it could have come from his baby sister in a few years. He pulled me up and led me to the bathroom mirror. 

I certainly did not look like the puffy-haired prom girls. 

The curls were swept loosely to the crown of my head where they tapered into a ponytail. The sides were braided up towards it, and some of the flowers that had fallen off of Gina and Susie’s corsages were stuck tightly in the braids. A few stray curls had fallen and framed my face. Dante made the squeal sound again as I gaped at myself in the mirror. 

~~~

When I had my rented tuxedo on, I turned to Dante. I opened my mouth to say something when the doorbell rang. We turned to listen down the hallway. 

A knock on Dante’s door, and Gina and Susie came in, looking far more tasteful and wearing dresses of reasonable size with reasonable sleeves and colors. Their hair was normal. I seemed to be accompanying the only girls in the state of Texas in the past twenty years who looked like actual people on prom night. 

As Dante and I slid corsages onto wrists, Gina whispered something to him. Dante’s eyes widened a little and he shook his head. Gina pulled out a bottle from a bag she’d brought and held it up to spray my hair. Hairspray. Susie, Gina, and Dante shared a little look as I patted it down gently. I didn’t bother to try and figure out what their expressions meant. 

We flew down the stairs after Susie’s exclamation of our lateness.  
“Ladies, you look beautiful,” Mrs. Quintana smiled.  
“Thanks, Mrs. Q!” Gina replied brightly.  
“You too, Ari.”  
I blushed, and the girls cracked up. Dante had the manners to choke his laughter down and try to disguise it as a cough.  
We said goodbye and drove off. 

Prom wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. As Gina, Susie and I walked in a little later than was considered fashionable (but everyone was milling around anyway, so it wasn’t bad), I got more than a few looks. I expected to get a few glares from some of the other guys because I had two dates who hung onto my arms and talked with me all night. 

“Hey,” a girl’s voice said behind me.  
“Hi,” I said as I turned around. She had on a tight satin dress in a dark purple that had ruffles over the entire thing. It took everything in me not to cringe or say something rude.  
“I um… I love your hair.”  
“Oh. Uh, thanks,” my hand went to the side of my head automatically. “Yours looks nice, too.”  
“Thanks. Did someone do yours for you?”  
“Yeah, my friend from another school.”  
“Nice. Anyway, have a good time,” she waved and walked off. 

Imagine that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I squealed so hard when I wrote this for some reason, so hopefully this chapter was enjoyable. 
> 
> 2\. I would love to have some fanart to go with this? I have zero art skills, so if you do, hit me up on Tumblr (@[smudgedinkwriting](https://smudged-ink-writing.tumblr.com/)) or feel free to just make some and credit this fic/tag me when you post it. 
> 
> 3\. As always, feel free to contact me! I already linked my Tumblr and you can email me at smudgedinkwriting@gmail.com. 
> 
> 4\. I'm not as good at writing Ari as I am Dante, and I think there's only one more chapter in this work that'll be Ari's POV so bear with me and it'll get better, I promise.


	3. Night of Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dante was hospitalized after he was jumped in an alley. Ari went to visit him in the hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first five lines of dialog are taken right from the book and belong to Benjamin Alire Saenz.
> 
> TW: This takes place after Dante was beaten up. I talk about it very, very vaguely and I don't say anything other than that it happened. It doesn't deal heavily with the violence, but if you are bothered by the idea of a homophobic attack then I would recommend skipping this chapter. Stay safe, darlings.

ARI

“Dante.”  
“Ari?”  
“I’m here,” I said.  
“Ari?” he whispered.  
“I should have been here,” I said. “I hate them. I hate them.”

That was a while ago. Time passed differently in here, where there was nothing to do but stare at each other. Nothing to do but stare at each other in the quiet. Nothing to do but sit on a vaguely uncomfortable chair with Mr. and Mrs. Quintana in this perfectly blank room where the only sound was the silence pulsating in my ears and one of the occasionally beeping machines Dante was hooked to and stare at Dante while Dante’s puffy eyes seemed to stare back, but you couldn’t tell, really, because they were really puffy, and pretend not to be so angry because the parents would lecture me and all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe right because I was so mad and I just needed to--

“Hey. You two should go home.”  
“Oh. If you’re sure?” Mr. Quintana said, clearing his throat a bit awkwardly.  
“Yeah, go take a shower and get some real food,” I looked to Dante.  
“Yeah,” Dante’s croaky voice agreed, “don’t worry about me.”  
Mrs. Quintana’s eyes went soft. She walked over to the bed and kissed him on the forehead. Mr. Quintana took Mrs. Quintana’s purse in one hand and her hand in the other while the mother bent down to look at Dante. She took his face in both hands. She whispered something to him, and I didn’t pay enough attention to hear it out of respect for them.  
“I’ll call, if…” I manage before they go.  
“Bye, Ari.” 

Now we were alone in the room. Staring at each other. It was a little less painful because there were only two instead of four bodies who didn’t know what they were doing. My racing mind still needed a diversion from its path, so I traced the room with my eyes. 

“What’s this?” I asked, going over to pick up a worn red backpack.  
“Some stuff,” he said, barely above a whisper.  
“You don’t have to talk.”  
His mouth twitched a little. “You asked, Ari.”  
I smiled and shook my head. 

I (quietly, terribly) hummed La Bamba to fill the silence as I unzipped the bag’s pouch. Inside were some things his parents had packed for him: a few items of clothing Dante hadn’t worn, since he was still wearing the plain white hospital gown; his sketchpad and a package of drawing pencils; a few short paperbacks that looked like he’d read them so many times he could’ve recited their contents; a small journal I’d never seen before; a few photos of Dante and his parents. A nice hospital bag packed for a nice hospitalized boy. I stopped humming as I came to the end of the song’s first chorus and let the quiet swallow us once again. At the bottom was a small bag of toiletries and a comb with some hair bands and clips. It had the things in it he always had stuffed in his shorts pockets whenever we hung out. 

As usual, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. What was strange was that I wasn’t sure what I was thinking, either. Dante was clearly drowsy, but the lines on his machines weren’t getting flatter like they did when people were breathing like they did before falling asleep. Before I had time to reconsider, I took the bag and set it next to Dante. 

I didn’t want to hurt him. He was so fragile then, like he’d never been before. Dante was an emotional guy, and he was usually kind of fragile-looking, but he never felt it. This was the first time I’d seen him look so much different from himself. Those boys in the alley had made my best friend, my starry-eyed, shoe-hating, argument-winning, poetry-reading Dante, feel like something other than the beautiful person he was. Distantly, I wondered why I thought those things so deeply about him. I pushed them even deeper until they weren’t there anymore. 

Carefully, as careful as I’d ever been with anything before, I took off my shoes and slid into the bed with him. I helped him scoot forward, and after what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes of awkward maneuvering, I was sitting behind him on the bed, and he was lying back between my legs. We were cautious of his ribs, but he didn’t do anything more than wince one time, so it seemed safe. 

“So. I don’t know how to do this.”  
He made a small sound of agreement in his raspy throat.  
“Umm. Don’t say anything, but I’m going to talk,” I nervously confirmed. 

I pulled the comb out of the bag and lined it up with the front of his hair. It’d been cut really short this spring, but it was a little longer on the top now, so there was something to work with. As I guided the comb through his hair, I softly told him about Gina and Susie, Legs, my mother and how she liked my hair long, my father never talking. I made up a story about what we’d do when we were all grown up, and how our parents would keep showing up at our houses, and how we’d live on the same street and make dinner together on weekends and go to the park without our tennis shoes until we were too old to walk at all. I talked about Bernardo, and all the almost-memories I had, all the assumptions I’d made. 

Sometime during all that talking (more than I’d talked in the past nine months combined), I took some strands of his hair and started braiding them. I was nowhere near as good as he was, but I’d watched Susie do it to Gina and vice versa when they’d come find me after school sometimes, and my mom would do it on me years ago when I’d gone too long without a trip to the barber, or on herself as I grew older. I knew enough to know that I was doing it, but it wasn’t very good. Plus, Dante’s hair was way shorter than anybody I’d seen do it on themself. At the end of each clumsily weaved snake of black hair, I tied one of the tiny rubber bands. 

“I don’t know, Dante.”  
“It’s probably fine, Ari,” he offered his first words this whole time.  
“Shh, don’t talk. That’s not what I meant,” I raked my fingers through my own messy hair, then reached up to wrangle it into two tails (I looked like a little girl, but it really worked!) as I continued. “I mean… I don’t know what I mean. I think there’s a lot- there’s a lot I’ll never understand about you being… you know… but… even though I won’t ever understand, I’ll still- I’ll still stick by you, you know? That doesn’t mean I get it, but I’m still mad they did this to you, and I… I don’t know what I’m saying anymore…”  
As I petered out, Dante’s shoulders shook a little. I noticed a tear on my own cheek, as well.  
“Hey, we’re gonna be okay,” I murmured. 

The silence swallowed us again as Dante’s shoulders jerked for the next few minutes, silently sobbing between my legs. I put my hand on one of the shoulders and rubbed it gently. Comforting people was never my thing. 

“‘In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on,’” I quoted when we’d both gotten ahold of ourselves enough.  
“Robert Frost…” he forced.  
“Shh.”  
He started crying again. Dante loved using his voice. I remembered him talking about liking to speak for himself in one of his letters from Chicago. Now, it hurt to say a few words. 

I hated that. 

DANTE 

Ari stayed there for a long time. We didn’t say anything, I just leaned back into him. My hair probably looked awful. That was the least of my concerns. Being held by Ari was the only thing I cared about, the only thing that lessened the pain that possessed my mangled body. 

I fell asleep at some point. When I woke up, Ari was still there. He was asleep, too. My parents weren’t back, or at least weren’t in the room. There wasn’t a window in my room, so I had no way of knowing how much time had passed unless I wanted to turn and hurt myself to look at the silently ticking clock. Ari still had his hand on my left shoulder. I reached upward with the hand that was less bandaged and took it. 

The small bag with my toiletries sat next to me. I pulled out my tiny compact mirror, wincing at both the sound the zipper made and how much it hurt. I flipped the mirror open. Well, Ari wasn’t very good at doing hair. I had maybe a dozen little braids sticking up from my head. The mirror started shaking in my trembling palm, so I put it back into the bag. I tried to smile. I couldn’t, it hurt too much. 

It didn’t matter. I was smiling on the inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> 2\. It's been like forever since I've posted. I got sort of in a slump, but I'm on a schedule now, so this should be finished soon! 
> 
> 3\. As I said after the last chapter, I'd love to see some fanart for this! Maybe not this chapter since it's kind of sad, but if you have art skills (which I lack ENTIRELY jfc), I'd love to see it! 
> 
> 4\. As always, find me on Tumblr @[smudgedinkwriting](https://smudged-ink-writing.tumblr.com/) and email me at smudgedinkwriting@gmail.com.


	4. Night of Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter of The Confession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, look at me! Actually updating!   
> This one's super short. I'll back back soon with a longer one <3

DANTE 

I was dreaming. 

I felt awake. But I knew that this could never have happened in real life. I had to be dreaming. Ari driving me out to the desert after we went bowling with our parents, then me telling him we couldn’t just be friends anymore, and then him kissing me… I’d had dreams like this before. I knew there was absolutely no way it was true, so I just soaked it all in and waited for the cruel wall I would hit when I woke up. 

ARI 

Dante said this was the best dream he’d ever had. I sat up halfway and pulled him in for another kiss. When we parted and settled back down onto the truck bed to look at the stars once again, I took his hand. 

He’d never have to dream about this again. It was really coming true

DANTE 

I traced my name on Ari’s back. He traced his name on mine. 

I leaned against the back of the truck and held him. The comb made its way out of my pocket and through Ari’s hair. My fingers twisted the dark locks into a braid with four strands. 

The night stretched on. 

ARI 

Eventually, it was getting late. We crawled into the truck, drunk on kisses and the feeling of the words on our tongues we never thought we’d be able to say and the shapes the stars made in the inky night sky. 

I dropped him off at his house. He placed a kiss on my forehead and one on my smiling lips before he climbed out. 

When I got home, my mother was waiting for me.   
“How was it, mijo?” she asked, her tired eyes fighting to stay open.   
“It was good.”   
“Yeah?” her smile made the room a little brighter.   
“Yeah,” I smiled back. “Hey, uh. Do you like my hair?”   
She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion.  
I reached up and gave the end a little tug.   
“It suits you,” she answered finally. 

I wish Dante could’ve been there to see the look on her face when she said that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, darlings!   
> See the previous chapter for my notes, since I don't think they're worth typing for a chapter this brief.   
> Love y'all!


	5. Night of Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tucson is celebrating this June, and Ari and Dante decide to join the fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a long one this time!  
> Forgive me if I'm not good about updating right now; I'm planning something BIG (like bigger than anything in this fandom that I've seen so far) and it's requiring copious amounts of character work and research. 
> 
> I'm not a huge fan of this chapter, if I'm perfectly honest? Like I don't think it's bad but it's really straying from the original idea and now this is just me writing a random pride thing because I'm gay and I feel like it. But read on, if you're still compelled to do so.
> 
> Enjoy!

DANTE

It’d been almost a year since that night under the stars. We had finally graduated. June of 1988 came as every other June in El Paso, Texas; hot, dry, and ready to smother those who occupied it. My every waking moment was now devoted to Ari. Ari’s every waking moment was now devoted to me. 

“I remember two years ago,” Ari told me one day as we lounged in his living room, “when there was this terrible DJ on the radio. I mean, really bad. And I thought, ‘I’m fifteen. I’m bored. I’m miserable.’”  
“Wow, you sure didn’t show it,” I snorted sarcastically.  
“Hey!” he smiled and poked me in the ribs.  
“Okay, okay. How do you feel now?”  
He thought for a moment. “Seventeen. In love. Way too hot for June.”  
We cracked up and went to open a window. 

“So…” he started, then trailed off, looking embarrassed.  
“So?” I nudged him with my shoulder and he squeezed my hand.  
“Um… You know my Aunt Ophelia’s house is in Tucson?”  
“Sure.”  
“Well, there’s this thing. In Tucson.”  
I turned to face him on the couch. “You mean pride?”  
“I guess.” I forgot sometimes how hard Ari could blush.  
“...and you want to go?”  
“If- If you wanted to go, I mean.”  
“Ari, you don’t have to be embarrassed about this.” I took his face in my hands. “I know being gay, or bisexual… or whatever you decide is right… is still weird for you. I get it, it’s weird at first for everybody. But you know I love you.”  
He leaned forward and kissed my nose and didn’t say anything. 

“Dante, you’re staying for dinner?” Lily Mendoza poked her head around the corner a few hours later. We’d been laying around in the living room all day, flipping through the channels even though we both hated television and plucking old books off the shelf in the corner. At the moment, I was laying on the floor with Ari on top of me reading me a poem from a book propped on my chest.  
“If you’ll have me, yes,” I grinned.  
“Of course, we’ll have you Dante,” she said, her fierce eyes going soft. “It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes. Call your mother.” 

We sat next to each other at the table. It was funny; we always started off very civilized, but a few minutes in I would oh-so-casually swing one long leg over Ari’s lap, his chair would somehow migrate closer to mine, and by the end of the meal he’d have his arm around me and my head would be on his shoulder. The parents pretended to be exasperated every time and forced down their smiles. We weren’t gross enough to feed each other or anything, but ever since we became boyfriends we were really touchy. This apparently included when our families were just trying to have a normal meal and we were practically sharing a chair. 

Ari cleared his throat (it slightly vibrated my head on his shoulder). “We were thinking of going to Tucson next week. Just us.”  
Jaime raised his eyebrows. Lily covered her mouth with her hand to hide the smirk I knew was forming there.  
“Wha- oh, god. Oh god. Oh no. That’s not- I- um. Well. I.”  
I lifted my head to poke his cheek affectionately before resettling and offering a translation. “What he means is that there’s a gay pride festival next Friday in Tucson and he’s asking if you’re okay with us staying at Ophelia’s house so we can go.”  
“Yeah,” Ari agreed, his blush starting to fade.  
“Oh!” Lily looked at Jaime, evidently searching for an objection.  
“Why not?” Jaime said.  
Ari buried his smile in my hair and I mouthed “thank you” to his parents. 

ARI 

We left the next Thursday, the day before the festival. It was a long drive, and we ended up leaving midafternoon. The sweltering sun had long dipped beneath the horizon by the time my truck pulled into the driveway of Aunt Ophelia’s house in Tucson. The radio was playing a cassette and Dante had just fallen asleep against the window, his hand somehow still on top of mine on the gear shift. My Dante… 

He yawned and turned a little to face me, dark eyes hooded and lazy with exhaustion.  
“Hi.”  
He hummed in response.  
“Love, we’re here.”  
His eyes shot open and he shook his head a little bit to wake himself up. With a grin on both our faces, we hopped out of the truck and took our bags inside to settle in for the night.

“Ari?” Dante said as we climbed into bed.  
“Yes?” I responded.  
“I’m glad we’re here.”  
“Yeah. Me too.”  
“I love you, Ari,” Dante tossed an arm across my waist and buried his face in my neck.  
“I love you too, Dante.”

DANTE 

The morning was filled with Ari’s nervousness (marked by nothing but a little crease between his slightly furrowed eyebrows, and, in a terribly cheesy cliche, I kissed it every time it showed up) and my constant chatter. 

“You know, at Stonewall, the first pride was a riot,” I was saying. “Now we get to celebrate instead of fighting because of all the progress…”  
“That’s great, Dante.”  
“Ari.”  
“Dante.”  
“What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing! I’m fine.”  
I turned from where I was making coffee to face him. “You wanna try that with me right now?”  
“You sound like my mom,” he deflected.  
“I’ll wait.”  
He sighed. “I don’t know. What do we… do?”  
“Oh! Um. Well, I guess we just do festival stuff? I’ve never been to one. I kind of thought we could just go and figure it out. Daniel told me he’d been once and people bring rainbow stuff and there’s a parade and music and drag and stuff.”  
“They bring rainbows?” he asked, his head tilted in confusion.  
“Yeah, like the gay pride flag. It’s a rainbow.”  
“Oh, yeah.” 

He seemed slightly less distant and eyebrow-scrunchy for the remainder of the morning. I’d painted a shirt for myself to wear splashed in rainbow patterns.  
I was in the middle of doing my makeup, black eyeliner in hand, when he walked into the bathroom behind me.  
“Hey Dante? Do you wanna, uh, do my hair?”  
I turned to face him. Even since getting together, the only time we’d talked about the Hair Thing was when he’d told me his mom liked it.  
“Yes,” I smudged out my left eye’s liner and tossed the pencil back into my makeup bag. 

The normalcy returned after that. He sat between my legs on the floor while I was in a chair, and he read from a book I’d tucked into my bag. I combed and combed, then stopped to consider what I wanted to do, letting Ari’s rich low voice wash over me without distraction. I let my fingers run through a few times and he stopped reading and let out a little sigh. I smiled.  
Then I sectioned the hair and started working it upwards. 

Four hair binders, some sticky hairspray from I stole from Gina’s purse a few weeks ago, and far too many pins later, it was done. We stood in front of the mirror together, stupid grins spreading on our faces. Ari leaned over and kissed me, and my eyes slid shut. Then he pulled away.  
“Hey!” I protested.  
“Your lipstick tastes gross,” he made a face and reached for a tissue to wipe it off his mouth. I stole it when he was done and blotted at my lips until they were dry and matte.  
“Better?” I whispered, leaning down to kiss him again.  
“No,” he muttered into my mouth. We bursted out laughing. 

ARI 

If I had to describe our first pride in Tucson, I would say it was a blur. 

Dante’s smile ever left his face (“my cheeks hurt but I can’t stop!”), we walked around for hours, watching the parade and musicians and just being there together, and I was very much in love. 

You’ve never really seen someone glow until you see them able to do something they’ve always wanted to. As we roamed the streets hand in hand, we didn’t check over our shoulders to make sure no one was watching. When Dante kissed me with his disgusting bright pink mouth, we didn’t even think twice. It was like seeing something open before me. I couldn’t remember why I’d been so nervous. 

“Oh my god, Ari?!” A voice yelled behind us as the sun was setting.  
“Gina?” Dante’s mouth fell open as we turned around.  
“Woah, hey guys!” Gina said, leaning over to kiss Dante and I on the cheeks.  
“We didn’t know you’d be coming,” I said.  
“Yeah, well. Dante, your makeup looks nice.”  
“His makeup looks like that everyday, he’s just wearing a different lipstick,” I furrowed my eyebrows.  
“Are you saying I don’t look beautiful?” he accused.  
“No! I meant, you always look beautiful.”  
Dante melted and leaned down to kiss my forehead. Gina made a fake barfing sound.  
“Gina, are you here alone?” Dante asked.  
In the same moment, Susie popped over holding a plate of food for the two of them and took Gina’s hand.  
My mouth fell open. Dante’s mouth fell open. Gina smirked. Susie looked confused.  
“Uh, hey guys?” Susie offered.  
Dante recovered and said hello. The four of us chatted about how we got to the festival and how beautiful everything was.  
“Ari, your hair looks amazing,” Susie said suddenly, reaching up to brush at it. Gina nodded in agreement. 

Dante’d put it in two little things at the top of my head. Later, we’d find out they were called space buns. I’d seen them once or twice on girls before, but these were looser and I had quite a few strands hanging down by my cheeks. I felt even more like a little girl than with pigtails, but it made Dante giggle and I ended up liking them, as usual. So they stayed. 

We walked around with the girls for the rest of the night. Apparently, Susie came out as bisexual to Gina, who also bisexual, and then they decided to date. We knew nothing about this, and it’d been going on since last Christmas break. Susie forgave us (“being in love makes you crazy and blind, sometimes”) and Gina did not (“not that blind, babe”). 

I got a few more compliments on my hair. At home, I’d always been embarrassed when somebody pointed it out; no one had before last summer, but after Dante and I started dating, I was noticeably less of an asshole and less threatening, so a few girls had mentioned it in passing before. All the guys at my school had short hair, but now more often than not mine would be in a style better than most of the girls had. But here, at pride, with my boyfriend and two best friends who were also now in a gay relationship, surrounded by people who all knew what it was like to be different… I don’t know, everything felt different. Better. 

DANTE 

If this is what Ari looks like at pride, I wish June lasted all year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Thank you so much for reading and for your support! I'm glad you enjoy this (:  
> 2\. Still would love to see any fanart! I did have one lovely person let me know they would work on some.  
> 3\. As always, I'm @[smudgedinkwriting](https://smudged-ink-writing.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr and you can email me at smudgedinkwriting@gmail.com.


	6. Night of Joy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few years later...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh! I don't really know what to say. I decided to make it more plot-heavy this time, much like in chapter five (but it's at least a little more relevant, chapter five was... chapter five was interesting. It's still me just writing a wedding scene because I felt like it). Enjoy!

DANTE

“Dante, you can’t!”  
“Dad, I have to!”  
“Dante…”  
“Dad. It’s my wedding. I can do what I want.”  
“But it’s tradition! You can’t just go see your fiance the morning of the wedding. Your mother will be horrified.”

This was the third time we’d had this argument in forty-five minutes. I was getting a bit tired of being told what to do with my own wedding. Besides, it wasn’t like it was legal anyway. It was going to be in the backyard, “officiated” by my dad. The only people coming would be our parents, Ari’s sisters with their husbands and kids, and Gina and Susie. It would be quiet, and after we said the vows we’d be going into the house to have tamales.

“Mom won’t be horrified. And neither will anybody else. Holding onto tradition at the backyard wedding of two boys isn’t getting us any closer to a normal event. Let it go,” I admonished, going back to the floral arrangement I was making.  
“Will you at least not look too much? It’s bad luck,” my dad tucked a yellow flower in between two white ones and a piece of greenery.  
“Alright, fine. Ari can close his eyes, and neither of us will look more than we have to. I won’t even see his face!”  
“I can’t convince you, huh?”  
“No, you can’t.”  
“Well, then do what makes you happy… I still wish you wouldn’t though.”  
“I wish a lot of things, Dad.” I pushed the arrangement to the other side of the table and stood up. “Rehearsal dinner starts in an hour.”

ARI

I was nervous.

The wedding would be starting in a few hours. It wasn’t even legal. There would be maybe a dozen people coming. It was just Dante and our family, plus our best friends. And yet, as I sat at the kitchen table to eat, my stomach rolled and my head became uncomfortably light.

“Amor? Ari? Ari Mendoza!” my mom snapped her fingers a few inches in front of my face. I flinched.  
“Sorry,” I mumbled, pushing my untouched food around with my fork.  
“Did you hear what she said?” my dad asked from across the table.  
“No, sorry.”  
“Dante’s coming over to do your hair in fifteen minutes,” he said.  
“What?” I dropped the fork with a clang. “Can he do that?”  
My mother shrugged, then smiled half-way. “It’s your wedding.”

After I choked down a few bites of food and a cup of coffee, I went up to my room and paced. I’d been growing out my hair since we’d gotten engaged because Dante’d had an idea for this. That was almost a year of no haircuts, and it’d been a bit longer than normal before that, so now my hair was perpetually tied at the apex of my head because it fell all the way down my chest.

A knock. “Ari?”  
“Dante!”  
“Hi, love. Okay, sit on the floor and close your eyes. No peeking, I fought my dad about this for hours yesterday and covering your eyes was the only way to get him to agree.”  
I smiled, sat by the end of my bed, and buried my face in my hands. “Ready.”  
The door opened and shut.  
“I’m trying to cover my eyes, too…” he trailed off and swore as he walked into my rocking chair. I snorted.

A few stumbles later, we were settled into our normal position. As Dante spread out his tools on my bed’s comforter, I made a list of all the poems and quotes I knew since I couldn’t open my eyes to read in case I saw Dante.

DANTE

Ari’s hair was SO long. I’d never loved it more than this.

Just sitting there, combing it in all of its glory, running my fingers through it, starting at the scalp and all the way down to the ends and pulling little moans and sighs from Ari’s lips, was like a lifetime in itself. Our own world.

It occurred to me that this, this thing that had been going on since the day I couldn’t stand to look at all the hair on Ari’s hair without touching it, was when I could tell him I loved him. The time I tried to, he sort of freaked out and told me not to say it, but as soon as I was doing this for him and taking lessons from Gina and Susie and even my mom, it was like a way I could say I loved him. And him, Ari who beat up guys because they were mean and swore at boys who shot birds and made me upset, who punched the wall in his basement and made a dent because he had pent up energy and who didn’t ever talk about his feelings… For him, it was saying he loved me right back because he trusted me enough to make him different.

Ari fumbled his way through a Maya Angelou poem, forgetting half the words and taking long pauses to remember them. I started in on the hairstyle, my trembling fingers visibly putting him at ease and my tears as silent as the first time I’d made two braids. _This is where it began,_ I thought.

ARI

“I don’t know any other poems, Dante,” I admitted from behind my fingers some time later. My palms were getting sweaty.  
“That’s okay, angel. I’m almost done.”  
“I won’t look at it until later.”  
“Okay.”  
I knew from his voice that he was smiling.

When he was done, he closed his eyes again. I looked up to the ceiling and he bent all the way over, and we felt around and kissed each other a few times, our noses bumping and chins getting in the way.

Dante finally left, so I could go down to see my mom. I had to pass the whole afternoon until the wedding started without looking or feeling.

“Ah, Ari, there you are. Feeling better?” she asked, not looking up from whatever pot she was stirring.  
“Yeah.”  
She turned around and gasped quietly. “Jaime, look.”  
My dad glanced up from the newspaper and smiled. After all this time, I still forgot how much I love it when he smiled.  
“I’m not looking until right before the ceremony.”  
“Well, it’s beautiful,” my father said. My mother nodded.  
We all did a wonderful job at pretending not to notice the tears in our eyes.

DANTE

“Back from cursing your marriage, I see.”  
“Hi, Dad.”  
“Sam. He didn’t curse his marriage,” my mom rolled her eyes.  
“Soledad. You never know.”  
She rolled her eyes again and smacked him before returning to the corsage she was making.

I don’t remember the rest of the day. All I can ever seem to recall is Gina and Susie showing up to get ready with us, my dad crying several times, my mom smiling her soft “my boy’s growing up so fast” smile, and having the girls redo my makeup twice because my hands kept shaking too much to put on good eyeliner. A record played in the corner of the room.

It was suddenly time to pile into the car and drive to Ari’s house with our share of the supplies. Cecilia and Sylvia’s cars were on the street in front of the house. Jaime met us at the door and made sure Ari was in the basement before I came inside. We were only breaking the archaic tradition once. My dad made sure of it.

Before I knew it, I was at the “altar” in the backyard. The house was in front of a small wood, so the trees cast a shadow and provided some relief from the sinking Texas sun. Two short rows of old white folding chairs parted in the middle to form an aisle. After my parents walked me up, they sat in the front. Next to them were two chairs for Ari’s parents and one with a photo of Bernardo on it. My record player was by the house playing our music softly.

Ari’s youngest niece, maybe three years old, walking too fast, tossed handfuls of yellow wildflowers my mother had cut from her garden that morning onto the green carpet of the lawn

Then came Jaime and Lily, tears already streaming down their smiling cheeks. Between them was Ari in a suit, my angel, my Ari, with a small corsage pinned onto his lapel. At our wedding. I almost swooned.

His hair was exactly how I’d left it, so I knew he’d been careful. A thick braid wrapped around his head in a dark crown, strands coming out, loose and natural. White flowers and pale green leaves were stuck in the braid. He looked like his namesake and his eyes shone like I’m sure mine did, too.

Lily and Jaime took their seats next to the photo of Bernardo. My dad came up from his seat to stand behind me. Ari took my hands in his.

ARI

In Dante’s eyes, I found all the secrets of the universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Thanks again for reading this and for all your appreciation! I really had fun writing it.  
> 2\. Watch for my next work, which I'll be starting soon. I think it'll be good? It'll be super long, at the very least.  
> 3\. As always, find me on Tumblr @[smudgedinkwriting](https://smudged-ink-writing.tumblr.com/), and email me at smudgedinkwriting@gmail.com.

**Author's Note:**

> That's it y'all! Thanks so much for reading! <3
> 
> As always, find me on Tumblr @[smudgedinkwriting](https://smudged-ink-writing.tumblr.com/) or email me at smudgedinkwriting@gmail.com.


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